Posts Tagged ‘ground’

Quick Take: This week’s average shows Likud Beitenu and Labor position similar to last week. Shas gains and takes the third position while Lapid’s Yesh Atid drops and falls into the fourth position. Hadash passes Meretz, while Kadima and Independence pick up gains. Am Shalem is also picking up steam. The right block gains ground this week with the help of Shas and Am Shalem’s gains.

…a parishioner checking on the food being set up in the parking lot saw something suspicious. A young woman was spraying graffiti on a church wall. When he asked her to stop, she knocked him to the ground…a man emerged from a nearby car and opened fire, killing Ordonez and wounding the other parishioner…recently gang members had threatened violence against residents who complain about or paint over graffiti…LAPD detectives are searching for the gunman and tagger but believe some witnesses are afraid to come forward out of concern about gang reprisals. Several witnesses talked to The LA Times only on the condition of anonymity, fearing for their safety.

Some of the most common styles of graffiti have their own names. A “tag” is the most basic writing of an artist’s name, it is simply a handstyle. A graffiti writer’s tag is his or her personalized signature. Tagging is often the example given when opponents of graffiti refer to any acts of handstyle graffiti writing (it is by far the most common form of graffiti). Tags can contain subtle and sometimes cryptic messages, and might incorporate the artist’s crew initials or other letters.

And this:

Tagging 1. (VERB) THE ACT of performing simple graffiti using spray-paint (usually cheap) and stencils. Done quickly, usually in seconds. Usually during the day.

Liad Arussy sent us this image of a collapsed tree in Fair Lawn, NJ, after Hurricane Sandy. She wrote: “Once stood so strong, now fallen in shame.”

Lying on its side, the tree is not dead, and the slab of grassy soil that was lifted along with its roots is alive, too, only not upright.

I hope whomever it is at the Fair Lawn municipality who is deposited with the responsibility of up-righting the uprooted trees will come over quickly, dig up the hole in the ground and replant this magnificent tree. I hope the orange ribbon, wrapped around the tree like some natural crime scene, doesn’t mean that the tree is slated to be hauled on a big truck and taken to be sliced up into convenient wood slabs.

Believe it or not, this picture of a woman rowing her boat in the river against the background of yellow and red tree foliage was taken in Israel. The river is the Yarkon, which years ago used to be the dumping ground for industrial waste and now it’s relatively clean and doesn’t smell at all. And the trees, my God, look at the reddening autumn trees! I remember turning 11 in this country before I got to see my first true reddening tree in fall. Now, this is progress!

We’re closing in on our first complete year here, in Israel. December 12 will be one year. I have to go change my NY State license (they give you a road test, too, brrrr…). Most nights we sleep with the air-conditioning off, which helps the pocketbook. We’ve already had two healthy rains coming down with a vengeance, one of them on Sukkot, but not the first night, so it’s OK.

I still don’t miss New York, except for the East River Park, which is now completely renovated and what a marvel and a delight. But come January it will be covered in a frosty blanket of snow while here, in Netanya, I’d be on the beach every day, dipping my footsies in the tide. So you win some and lose some.

The world is fresh this morning. The air is sweet. I might just go make myself a cup of tea and sit by the panorama window in the living room and watch the palm tree outside. That one ain’t going reddening any time soon. He is indigenous to the two-season Middle East: 9 months summer, 3 months winter.

I never had a palm tree in my front yard before. There’s a lot to watch…

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was identified penetrating Israeli airspace this morning, and was intercepted by the IAF at approximately 10:00 AM. IDF soldiers are currently searching the area where the drone was downed, in open areas in the northern Negev, to locate and identify the drone.

That’s the whole report.

News agencies add additional minor details but the large questions remain unanswered for the moment. China’s Xinhua news service says the unidentified drone flew over settlements and military bases in southern Israel briefly before being brought down by IDF fire over an open unpopulated area. It was spotted entering Israel’s airspace from the Mediterranean sea heading from the west to the east. But there is no word on where the UAV originated.

The Daily Mail‘s website, published in the UK says this is not the first incident in which Israel has shot down drones entering its airspace:

The Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah has launched several such aircraft into Israel over the past few years. In the 2006 war, Hezbollah launched an Iranian-made drone capable of carrying explosives into Israel that was shot down. Another one launched two years earlier crashed in the Mediterranean.

The Mail also quotes the IDF’s military spokesperson, Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, saying no one was injured in the process of bringing down this morning’s drone, and that Israeli ground systems alerted the air force to its presence, as a result of which IDF jets were given the order to scramble and intercept it. The Israeli air force “was in control throughout… We had monitoring contact from the ground and from the air.” She said the drone flew over the Gaza Strip but did not originate there and declined to give more details. But Israel media reports have suggested this was an intelligence gathering drone and was not carrying explosives.

Times of Israel publishes video footage of the IDF bringing down the drone, and says the army is considering “the possibility that it originated in Lebanon. Hezbollah has flown drones into Israeli airspace a few times in the past, though not for several years“.

Back in April 2012, the daily Yediot Aharonot reported that the terrorists of Lebanon’s Hezbollah have

been allocating increased resources towards bolstering its drone unit… The Shiite terror groups reportedly plans to use its unmanned aerial vehicle to attack Israel in case it mounts a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Hezbollah is equipped with Ababil (“Swallow”) drones, which are manufactured and provided by Iran.The Ababil has several models, including one that can carry a warhead packed with several dozens of kilograms of explosives. Defense establishment officials expressed concern that Hezbollah would be able to send multiple drones into Israel’s airspace and have them crash into targets in the country’s north. “Hezbollah is making a specific effort to acquire such (weapons) as part of its offensive lineup against Israel,” a security source told Yedioth Ahronoth.

The Lebanon Daily Star reported that a Hezbollah drone crash-landed inside Lebanon in July. As far back as 2006, the IDF brought one of those Ababil drones down in the sea off the northern Israeli city of Akko [report].

A website called Arkenstone ["a comprehensive, open source, English-language database on the Iranian armed forces"] gives more background about Iranian drones. Keep in mind we still don’t know the source of today’s drone. And for the moment (it’s 7:45 pm Saturday night here in Jerusalem) there are no reports about this that we can see in the online Iranian media.

Iran has unveiled what it says is a new “indigenous” long-range unmanned drone capable of flying over most of the Middle East, state media report. The Shahed (Witness) 129 had a range of 2,000km (1,240 miles) and could be equipped with bombs and missiles, the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps said. It is reportedly capable of carrying out reconnaissance and combat missions.

Mordechai Ben David, Chaim Yisrael, Udi Davidi and Shlomo Katz performed to a packed audience on Wednesday in the Jewish biblical city of Hebron, burial ground of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah, and Jewish ancestors and notables Jesse, Ruth, and Avner.

Former IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Moshe “Boogie” Yaalon also made an appearance at Sukkot celebrations in the city.

“It just shows how much people love Hebron”, English spokesman for the Jewish Community of Hebron David Wilder told the Jewish Press.

The Mishna in “Chapters of our Fathers” 5:5 describes ten miracles that used to occur in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem (a couple of feet above the Western Wall in the picture). One of those miracle was that when the pilgrims—hundreds of thousands of them—stood in the Temple courtyard, they were crammed together, like the crowd you see here, photographed Monday night, the eve of Yom Kippur.

But when the time came for every pilgrim to prostrate themselves on the ground, the dimensions of the place morphed and each individual pilgrim had ample space so that no person touched the bodies of their fellow worshippers.

The multitude in the Temple courtyard fell on the ground as the High Priest read out the full name of God, all 72 letters of It. And when he was done, they all cried out: Blessed be the Name of His Kingdom for eternity.

We do both those things on Yom Kippur, during the Mussaf prayer: prostrate ourselves on the floor of the synagogue (on a sheet of paper), and cry out the blessing which, on normal days we only whisper.

It preserves the muscle memory of the ancient ceremony.

During the year, we whisper the “Blessed be the Name of His Kingdom for eternity” line after we say the opening line of the Shma reading. Each day, twice a day, when I say that line, I’m transported in my head to the place where I had last said it out loud, prostrated on the floor.

For an entire year now, I’ve been returning in my head, twice a day, to the Stanton Street Shul on the Lower East Side, where I last kept Yom Kippur.

This year, we’ll be staying with our friends in Tzfat, and will be davening in a Chasidish place in that strange, old town. I’ll be saying good bye to the last spiritual vestige of the Diaspora inside my head.

Possibly…

Have a meaningful fast. If you wish, this can be the most fun day of the year.